The Ring (2002)

               I’ll go ahead and say it: Gore Verbinski earned his time in director jail. I saw his version of ‘The Lone Ranger’ in theaters not because of his work with the Pirate of the Caribbean movies but because of the lingering fondness I felt from enjoying his 1997 slapstick comedy ‘Mousehunt’ in a theater. I’ve only recently learned that it was a commercial success, I’d assumed it was a flop because I remember seeing it completely alone and never noticed anyone talking about it. It made an unadjusted $128 million off of a $38 million dollar budget, and considering it’s a movie about Nathan Lane and Lee Evans chasing a CGI mouse around and doing Tom & Jerry gags that’s a very respectable return. Somewhere around the second Pirates movie, though, Verbinski kind of forgot that money was real and his budgets started to soar. His cowboy movie cost an adjusted $338 million and only brought in $351 million, and when other expenses are factored in it’s rumored to have cost Disney somewhere between $150 and $190 million.

Don't put your title at the end, that's annoying.

              But Verbinski had to work up to be handed that much money to set on fire, and for a few years he was one of the hottest directors out there. ‘The Ring’ didn’t just make money ($444 million worldwide from an $86 million budget), it became a trendsetter. For a while “J-Horror” was the new hotness and in the years following its release we got ‘The Grudge,’ ‘Dark Water,’ ‘The Eye,’ and several others. It’s also important to note that his Pirates trilogy brought in something in the neighborhood of $3,000,000,000. It’s true he hasn’t directed a movie since 2016’s ‘The Cure for Wellness,’ but he’s currently in post-production on his new film at the time of writing, so apparently he’s been let out of director jail. If this new one tanks he may get put back, this time in the same permanent facility as Elaine May and Frank Darabont.

              The story goes that this movie happened because producer Walter F. Parkes handed him a copy of ‘Ringu,’ the Japanese version of the expanded edition of a tv movie version of the original novel. Let’s unpack that chain of adaptations. The original novel, Ringu, was published by Koji Suzuki in 1991. It was adapted in 1995 into a tv movie which aired on Fuji tv. A slightly different cut than the one that aired was released on VHS only in Japan as “Ringu: Kanzenban,” or “Ring: The Complete Edition.” A feature film version was adapted from both the original novel and this expanded tv movie, with major changes to characters and plotlines. This is the version that was given to Verbinski. By that point in Japan there’d been two sequel novels, two sequel films, two tv series, and at least two manga adaptations. There have also been two American sequels, although you can argue how much 2017’s ‘Rings’ really counts. The American version is relatively faithful to the Japanese film, at least in terms of its overall structure. They’re both about a journalist unraveling the mystery of a video tape in an effort to save both herself and her son, and the eventual solution is also the same. Everything in the middle involving the spooky little girl and what exactly happened to her are pretty different, which is to be expected.

              I honestly couldn’t remember if this was a Fincher film or not before watching it, and I felt terrible when I realized it was directed by Verbinski. Until I actually watched it, and then I understood why I’d made that mistake. From the faded color palette to the slow and steady camera work, this has the precision and deliberate pace that I associate more with Fincher than the director of ‘Rango.’ This isn’t even a slight on Verbinski’s usual work, I really like his ability to translate cartoon slapstick into live action, it’s what I liked about ‘Mousehunt’ and the first movie and a half of his Pirates trilogy. Even people who loathed ‘The Lone Ranger’ when it was first released (and there were a lot of us) had to admit that the extended climax involving the train was incredible filmmaking. I’m not sure whether there’s any real humor in this movie at all and certainly no hijinks. It’s so far outside of what I consider his wheelhouse that I have trouble connecting his name to the images from this movie. I’ve heard good things about his 2005 film ‘The Weatherman,’ maybe it’s time to check that out.

              I guess I should lay out the premise of the film. It’s nicely encapsulated right at the beginning with a couple of teenage girls telling spooky stories to each other. One of them tells the other about this cursed video tape. The story goes that if you watch it you receive a phone call saying you only have seven days to live. The other girl accuses the first of teasing her since that’s what happened last week when she and some friends went to a cabin in the woods, down to the creepy call. A bunch of fake outs happen, to the point where I was starting to get annoyed, and then the movie establishes the warning signs to look out for: water pooling on the floor or dripping out of electronics and televisions spontaneously turning on. We don’t actually see her death, which is going to be a theme for the rest of the movie.

              Enter her aunt, a journalist named Rachel Keller and played by Naomi Watts. Watts’ career has confused me for a long time. She’ll be in big, mainstream films like this movie, the Peter Jackson ‘King Kong,’ and ‘J. Edgar,’ the Hoover biopic directed by Clint Eastwood. She’s also in a lot of artier fare, like ’21 Grams,’ ‘The Painted Veil,’ and almost everything David Lynch has turned out since 1999. But then she’ll star is absolute shit like ‘The Shaft,’ ‘Movie 43,’ and ‘Shut In.’ I guess that’s just the life of a working actor? At some point I got the impression she’d ascended to at least the lower ranks of actual movie stars, where you get to pick and choose your roles and impose some quality control. But considering that she just had a role in the fucking ‘Emmanuelle’ remake I guess she’s still grinding away. Anyway she’s very good in this.

              While attending her niece’s funeral she overhears some teens gossiping and puts together the story that all four kids who watched the videotape died on the same day at the same time and decides there’s a story in it. She heads over to the cabin and pretty quickly locates the tape. She instantly watches it, and I had to fully pause the movie to furiously scribble some notes. At this point she’s already aware that her 16-year old niece died from an incredibly unlikely heart attack, her secret boyfriend killed himself, and the two other kids died in a car accident, all at precisely the same time. Even if one were to suppose a vast conspiracy with tendrils reaching into surrounding hospitals and law enforcement, having them all die at the same time would be weird enough to catch someone’s attention, which is exactly what happened with Rachel. I guess it’s possible she went to the cabin with the expectation that she was about to start pulling some truly long thread that would unravel into a huge scandal, but nothing about her demeanor or what she tells her colleagues at the newspaper backs that up. That really just leaves a supernatural explanation, in which case why watch the videotape yourself? I guess that’s part and parcel of driving up to the cabin, there’s no point in obtaining the tape if you’re not going to watch it, but why take that chance? This is just a fancier way of stating the usual horror movie complaint ‘why did the character do the dumb thing?’ The answer is so the movie can happen, but Rachel is fairly quick to understand the nature of the threat after this point, I guess I’m just a little annoyed that she was dumb at the start. I wrote in big letters in my notes, ‘What did she think was going to happen?’

              So despite getting the phone call saying she was going to die in seven days she dubs a copy and shows it to her ex-boyfriend, a professional film editor. I’d like to say at this point that I’m sure the actor Martin Henderson is a talented individual, but despite the fact that he’s clearly the co-lead in this movie he’s got the face and screen presence of a bit player and whenever he’d pop up in a scene I’d be surprised all over again that he was still in the movie.

Sure, pet the horse, it'll be fiiiiiiine.

              I like that what ends up saving Rachel and what allows the film series to continue on endlessly (and inspire a huge number of other films that follow the ‘curse as communicable virus’ template, like the ‘It Follows’ and ‘Smile’ movies), the fact that she copied the cursed tape and showed it to someone else, is played so nonchalantly on the screen. The act isn’t given a whole lot of emphasis, it’s presented as just a normal thing to do, which it is. If she’s going to have a tape manipulated by someone else it’s better to do it to a copy and not the original. Mind you, this does end up biting her on the ass when her son ends up watching the thing, adding a ticking clock on top of the already ticking clock.

              Let’s talk briefly about her son Aidan, played by David Dorfman. I didn’t watch the movie when it first released, but even back then I read movie reviews for enjoyment, and I remember a lot of complaints and confusion about why her son was so creepy from the start, completely independently from the cursed videotape. His performance is a lot, and absolutely not the fault of the actor. This is clearly what Verbinski was going for. Aidan is preternaturally calm and composed, always speaking in full sentences and having no visible emotions. He’s always a step ahead of his mom in chores and preparations, even calling her by her first name like she’s a sibling. Rachel doesn’t seem particularly unorganized or unprofessional, she’s a little rough around the edges but that plays into her reporter characterization. I’m sure they explain this in the commentary track, but my guess is that Rachel’s son being creepy is meant to parallel the eventual reveal that Samara, the ghost girl behind all of this, was also a creepy kid which is what led to her being killed by her mother. It doesn’t quite work with the semi-twist at the end, but I think that was their intention. The performance does end up being very distracting for the first third of the movie.

              The middle section of the film might be my favorite, which is not to slight the ending. The slow unraveling of what happened to Samara and how the cursed videotape came to be was actually very well done, I thought. I’ve read some reviews that called the plot confusing, and while I admit that not every I was crossed or every T dotted I got the gist: a creepy psychic girl with the ability to project thoughts into other peoples heads or onto film was tossed down a well by her adoptive mother. She survived at the bottom for seven days, thus the survival period of the curse. Eventually the cabin the teens stayed in was built over the well and the angry ghost projected her thoughts onto the videotape. As far as explanations for an urban legend go, that’s not too bad.

              What really made it gripping for me were two sections. One was when I remembered that Brian Cox was in the film after Rachel tracks down Samara’s adoptive dad. Her first confrontation with him is super-tense and very well done. I may just enjoy the acting talents of Brian Cox. The other was the scene with the horse on the ferry, which had me physically recoiling from the screen a couple of times. When it was all done I was scrunched as far back as I could literally be and still be seated. The escalation was simply amazing, there were about three different moments when I thought they were about to wrap things up but it just kept going and it ends in such an upsetting way I had to pause the movie again, even though it didn’t actually show much.

              That restraint extends to the film’s money shot, the moment when Samara crawls out the tv set. The imagery has permeated pop culture to the point that it’s actually a stale reference by now, something that would’ve been beaten into the ground by Mad tv at the time. But we only actually see it in the movie once. In fact, over the course of the entire movie Samara only kills two people we actually meet and five in total. For such a popular movie that’s not a huge body count, but the way the movie builds up to it the final kill very well done. Eventually Rachel and her ex return to the cabin as her seven days are set to expire and uncover the well. She manages to fall down and have a fun little dream sequence with Samara. She recovers her remains and the curse marks on her arms disappear as her time limit expires and she isn’t ghost murdered. The police get called, everyone’s got safety blankets on and they muse to themselves that she’ll finally be at rest. The camera even shows them possibly reconciling, all happy and smiley with some actual light in the scene for once.

And they lived happily ever after.

              Then we realize there’s about twenty minutes left in the movie and start to get squirrely again. There’s a wonderful moment where Rachel explains to her son, who’s been having conversations with Samara ever since he saw the tape, that she finally helped her and set her free. Her son’s eyes go wide and he urgently asks her why she did that. We cut back to the ex, who hears the tv switch on, and he realizes along with everyone else that the curse is still fully in effect and his time just expired. He recoils back from the emerging figure as Rachel furiously races over in a futile effort to stop what’s happening.

              Afterwards there’s a montage that’s supposed to show Rachel putting the pieces together and realizing that what saved her was copying the tape and showing it to someone else, not anything she did to recover Samara’s remains. The montage even includes a little snippet of tape from a psychological evaluation of the little girl where she admits that she wants to hurt people. The very end of the movie is her holding Aidan’s hands while helping him push the buttons to make another copy of the tape. She explains that this is going to save his life. He soberly asks her what’s going to happen to the person she shows it to, and the movie ends on her grim silence.

              There was originally going to be a wraparound for the film, featuring Chris Cooper. He apparently played a child-murder convinced he was killing for the Lord. Rachel was going to interview him near the beginning of the movie and then deliver the tape to him at the very end. It ended up being cut due to a combination of a recognizable actor having that small of a role in the film being distracting to the test audiences and the correct realization that Rachel having no answer to her son’s question was a better note to end on.

              This is a very good film and it more than justifies its status as a sleeper-hit upon release and its status as a classic now, not just a cult one. The wave of J-Horror remakes that it kicked off might not have turned out anything as artistically successful as this, but a bunch of people got to watch some new type of spooks which isn’t nothing. The reputation of its sequel, the imaginatively titled ‘The Ring Two,’ is decidedly more mixed, and I’m not sure I want to sully the ending of this movie by learning what happened afterwards. I am also incredibly annoyed that it took reading up on this film to realize that the title refers not only to the ring of light peeping through the cover on the well that Samara was trapped in, but also the ring of the phone call that signals you have a week to live. I’m a little disappointed in myself, that’s the kind of pun I should have noticed right away.